


First Oceans

by Asterrious



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: My Junkrat is always trans, Obligatory beach AU, Trans Junkrat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-15 15:38:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8061985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asterrious/pseuds/Asterrious
Summary: Roadhog gives in and takes Junkrat to the beach for the first time. Rat neglected to mention that he can't swim.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Pre-transition for Junkrat, pre-loss of his right arm. 
> 
> Roadhog needs a nap and Jamie's gonna need a lot of aloe.

Junkrat had never seen so much water all in one place. The moment he set foot on the loose, shifting stand, he was still for the first time in a long time. Instead of the usual chatter that ran through his head, the ideas and observations that kept him constantly buzzing and moving, there was only the crash of the waves hitting the sand in front of them again and again. The air was salty on his tongue, the breeze laden with the stink of rotting seaweed and fish washed ashore.

Up until that moment, he’d still harbored suspicions that Hog was pulling his leg about the ocean. That there couldn’t possibly be that much water in the world, not with all the struggle to find it in the outback. Not with the many throats cut in pursuit of just a mouthful of clean-ish, not-gonna-kill-you-on-the-first-sip-but-no-guarantees-about-the-rest-of-em, water. Staring the ocean in the face for the first time, he felt a little hysterical and a little angry. So he stayed quiet, even as Hog lumbered up behind him with an umbrella and a duffel bag under his arms. 

They’d only been travelling together for two months now, hopping from city to city in the non-irradiated parts of Australia. In that time, Roadhog had probably had a combined two hours of silence. He was not a patient man at the best of times, but the Rat knew how to run through a person’s nerves like an expert sprinter, pushing every single button he passed along the way. It was a miracle no one had knifed the skinny fuck just to get him to shut up; Roadhog had considered doing it himself a few times, when ancient pop music flicked on at 3 am so Junkrat could work on a new idea for a bomb he’d just had. 

If Rat hadn’t been paying so well, his brains would be smashed against the nearest wall within Hog’s first week of employment. He was giving up on ever finding a way to shut the kid up, but at least he knew one thing that would make him shut up. However temporarily.

When Roadhog began to set up on the sand, Rat snapped himself out of his momentary transfixion and raced over to him. Unused to the shifting ground beneath his peg leg, he ended up with a mouthful of sand and a strand of seaweed dangling from one eyebrow. Jamie cursed and rolled over as his bodyguard laughed at him, one arm flying up to try and simultaneously flip him off and pull the plant away from his eyes. 

It was hot, the way it always was. Before leaving Australia for good, Junkrat had begged, pleaded, bribed, and eventually tried to threaten Hog into taking him to see the ocean. Not the brief glimpses he’d gotten of it from the motorcycle while they were speeding away from the authorities or trying to sneak around a dock- a real, honest to god, day at the fuckin’ beach.

Since they were about to leave the country for good anyway, Roadhog had finally relented one morning, when Jamie was up with the sun and shaking him awake too. 

So far so good, no matter how bad of an idea he thought it was. And it had been a long time since he’d been to the beach.

He spread two or three comforters around on the ground, souvenirs from various motels they’d visited in the past week. Regular beach blankets just were big or comfortable enough. The umbrella’s stand was driven into the sand with one huge foot, Roadhog leaning all his weight on the thing for a moment to let it anchor itself. Then he raised a bright yellow umbrella over their little portion of the secluded beach. It wasn’t his color in the slightest, but Junkrat had taken an immediate liking to it when he saw it in a window. Mako drew the line at letting him paint one of his signature smiley faces on it though- might as well have gotten one with a target painted on it if he did that.

Deeming the sand too dangerous to walk on for the moment, the blonde dragged himself across the ground with his elbows as the duffel bag was set down on the blankets. Roadhog reached over to snag him by the back of his shorts before he could crawl onto them though, holding him at arm’s length and shaking to remove the excess sand. The shit got everywhere- he wasn’t going to be spending the afternoon on sandy blankets, not if he could do anything about it. 

“Fuckin’ hell mate, put me down, come on!” He wiggled in the air, uselessly swinging his arms and legs. Hog did not relent, giving him a few good bounces to knock the seaweed and other debris off. 

“Ow, quit- fuckin’ quit it, me shorts are so far up me ass I’m gonna need th’ pliers ta dig ‘em out!”

When he deemed his boss ‘good enough’, he dropped him into the shade of the umbrella and went back to unpacking the items they’d brought. Their weapons were carefully stored away at the bottom of the bag, but there was a bottle of sunscreen, changes of clothes, and a couple canteens full of water on top. He’d felt like Rat’s mother, packing this morning, but he absolutely refused to put up with any sort of whining about sunburn from the smaller man. Once the protective layer of dirt and soot washed away from his skin, Hog was going to force the sunscreen on him whether he liked it or not.

Quickly, Jamie got bored with watching the unpacking process. They’d picked this place for it’s seclusion- there was an excess of seaweed in the water, and the seafloor dropped sharply only a few yards away from shore. It was unpopular with tourists, and locals would probably start arriving later in the day, once the sun was going down and the air got slightly cooler. There were a few people further down the sand, but as long as no one wandered too closely, they wouldn’t be any trouble.

But that meant there was nothing for Rat to watch, while waiting for Hog to make himself comfy at their campsite for the day. Despite only just arriving on the blankets, he climbed to his feet again with one hand balanced on Roadhog’s back, waiting until he was absolutely sure his peg leg was steady before he ventured back out onto the sand. A few loose grains had made their way inside his binder from his fall and he slipped a hand underneath it to rub at them, slowly and carefully making his way towards the water. 

Leaving behind his bomb harness and shoes for the day, all he had on were his cameo shorts and the layered sports bras he used to bind his chest. Rat really hadn’t seen the big deal about the bandages he’d used before joining up with Roadhog, but the bigger buy had insisted on the switch.

It would certainly make it easier to enjoy the water though. The few times in his life that he’d gotten the bandages wet, they’d chaffed so badly he’d had blisters. Hopefully the bras wouldn’t do the same.

He made it to the water’s edge before he stopped, chewing on his lower lip. Blue eyes darted around the horizon, trying to find any sign of something beyond the vast waters. Rat wasn’t afraid of the water, per se- there were people playing in the waves further up the sand, and he could see for himself that they weren’t dissolving or screaming in pain.

There was anticipation deep in his gut, the sensation that there was about to be something new in his life. Most of his twenty-two years had been the same; scrapping, fighting, surviving. But since meeting Hog, things had changed drastically. They had been discussing leaving Australia, to see the parts of the world that hadn’t been irradiated and steal from people who had never heard of Junkers in the Outback. Well, it was more like he’d been talking about it and Roadhog had been grunting. But they were grunts of affirmation, he could just tell. 

They were gonna leave soon.

A wave rushed up over his bare foot and pegleg while Junkrat was thinking and he jumped back in shock at the cold feeling of the water, squinting down suspiciously at the newly wet foot.

When there was no sensation of pain, he felt it was safe to go a little further.

Or a lot further. Because he could never make himself wait for long.

With a loud shout of joy, Jamie ran into the surf. It instantly got a lot harder to move his legs and he wondered about that for a moment, but the cold feel of the water had him reluctant to stop. He got up to about his waist before he stopped, turning back around to wave one arm at the big lump sitting underneath their umbrella. Hog too was sans most of his usual attire, wearing only a pair of massive swim trunks, a pair of flip flops, and his mask. 

“The water feels fuckin’ aces, mate! Never been able to stand in it ‘afore!”

Hog’s head snapped up to look at him, but Junkrat was already rushing further into the surf, meeting an oncoming wave belly first. It smacked against his skin with a loud noise, and he howled in a mix of laughter and pain as another swell began to rush at him. 

The impact of this one knocked him off his feet and Rat tumbled head over heel, dragging along by the wave’s momentum. For a moment, he opened his eyes and saw nothing but the swirl of water before he had to shut them again, salt stinging badly. He struggled to find the ground again, but somehow he felt only water as he was rushed back to the shoreline, thousands of stinging particles of sand whipping past his skin along with the froth of the wave. Instinctively, Junkrat held his breath, heart beating fast in his throat.

Then, he was yanked roughly out of the surf and up into the air. The blonde blinked in the sudden light and coughed, hacking back up the small amount of water that had managed to rush up his nose. Hog glared at him as Rat dangled upside down, the thigh of his leg grasped in one giant hand. The grip had him nose-to-nose with the pig mask and he could make out a pair of eyes in the lenses, which were dotted with water droplets. They were standing much closer to the shore than Rat remembered being, the water lapping around Roadhog’s legs as though he were a rock.

“You can’t swim.” It wasn’t a question but Junkrat still tried to cock his head to the side in confusion.

“That what I was doin’?”

Hog heaved a huge sigh and started back for shore with his confused boss, frowning now. Of course the younger junker didn’t know how to swim. There weren’t huge pools of water available in the Outback and it wasn’t high up on the list of important things to teach kids when there was food to be found and water was such a precious resource. From the sound of it, Rat didn’t even know what swimming was.

“No. You were drowning.”

“Huh.” Rat took in this new information while Roadhog walked back up the sand, still holding him aloft. A few huge towels, courtesy of the same hotels the blankets had come from, were lying under the umbrella and he set Junkrat down on one of them. Another was thrust into his arms for him to towel off with and Hog did the same, stopping before he stepped on the carefully constructed nest to knock the sand off his feet. 

The blonde frowned at the thing in his arms and looked over at his bodyguard sourly.

“’Ey, what’s this? I wanna go back in the water, not get dry!”  
“You don’t know how to swim, Rat. You’ll die.”

Indignation flashed into his blue eyes and he growled, throwing down the fluffy towel as an act of rebellion. Spinning on his heel, he turned to jab a finger in the direction of the other-beach goers, paddling around in the waves.

“They aren’t kickin’ tha’ bucket!”

“They can swim.”

He groaned and scrunched up his nose, stamping the ground in frustration. When the temper tantrum had no visible effect on Roadhog, he grew more frustrated.

“Then show me! M’gonna die of boredom if I hafta sit ‘ere and watch ya read yer book all day!”

When he’d dried off his swim trunks as much as he could, Mako sat down on the toweled part of the blanket with a quiet huff, ignoring Junkrat in favor of picking his book back up from where he’d left it. A frustrated whine rose from his boss, easy to ignore among the multitudes of noises that Rat could make. 

Realizing that he’d get no further response from his bodyguard, the skinny junker turned in a huff to start marching back towards the ocean. Fast as a whip, Hog’s hand shot out to grab the back of his shorts and haul him onto the blankets. He fell back on his ass, directly onto the towels, with his sandy feet still outside the perimeter of their nest. 

“God damnit, what is it with you n’ me shorts today? Gonna fuckin’ rip, ‘em, swear ta god…”

The dance continued three more times before Junkrat finally gave up, plopping down on the pile of blankets with a heavy, exaggerated sigh. He made sure to land his sopping wet hair off the towels, just to annoy Hog, but the other didn’t even look at him. One giant hand was holding the book up and the other was free, in case his boss tried to make a break for the water once again.

This truce lasted for all of five seconds before Junkrat began to whine.

“Pleaaaase Roadie? C’mon, I can feel me brain goin’ numb!”

Silence.

“I don’t even have anythin’ ta tinker with!”

“Build a sand castle.” He could have sworn he saw and heard Roadhog snicker to himself.   
“A what? Mate, I don’t even fuckin’ know wha’ that is!”

The other moved quietly, thumbing the page he was reading before turning to the next.

Junkrat sat there, sharp teeth gnawing on his lip as he thought about what to do. He knew there’d be another book the duffel bag- Hog always brought two in case he finished the one he was working on. But he couldn’t read for shit, and it was doubtful the story could really hold his attention for long. They were wanted criminals and so he couldn’t take a walk down the beach and chat with the other people out for a daytrip, not without Roadie getting mad. The water seemed right out, if he didn’t want to go tearing down the beach butt-naked.

Actually, he could probably use that option as a last resort.

The blonde leaned over to study the sand next to their nest, inspecting the small grains for anything useful. All he found was seaweed and identical, tiny rocks. He palmed a handful, letting it run through his fingers and watching the way it collected on the ground below. 

A wicked idea formed and he scooped up another chunk, turning to Roadhog with what he thought was subtly and craft.

“Throw that sand at me and I’ll make you eat it.”

He let them drift back to the ground with a sigh.

Yellow hair popped into Roadhog’s field of vision as Junkrat leaned over his book to see what he was reading. Considering the view was upside down, he definitely wasn’t understanding much. The bigger man growled and pulled the novel away from the other’s dripping hair, scowling inside his mask when he saw the telltale marks of water droplets on the paper. If he’d already finished the book, that was one thing, but he was only halfway.

“Damnit Rat, if I show you how to swim, will you leave me alone?”

The kid lit up like it was Christmas morning and he jumped to his feet enthusiastically. Water went raining down once again and Hog heaved himself to his feet before anymore could be shed, gesturing for Junkrat to follow. Despite the carefully packed bag, he wasn’t the kid’s mother. He shouldn’t have to be the one to tell him about things, show him what the fucking ocean was or how to swim in it. Rat was the most troublesome person he’d ever come across, with a penchant for getting into trouble that bordered almost on suicidal. 

Yet here he was, walking the kid down to the ocean to show him how to not drown.

Full swimming was too much for today. He didn’t feel like spending an hour with a hand wrapped underneath the other’s body so he could practice kicks and different strokes without drowning. Showing Rat how to tread water should be enough, and while he wouldn’t be able to go for long without glancing at the water to make sure he still saw that blonde head, he wouldn’t have to sit in the shallows with him like you did for toddlers.

Junkrat rushed into the water with far too much enthusiasm for someone who’d been caught in the undertow of a strong wave on his first dip in the ocean. Hog followed slowly, giving himself time to adjust to the cold temperature of the water. The waves were bigger than he’d like for this lesson, but they’d make do. Junkrat turned around once he was standing waist deep and Hog stopped, studying the smaller man and deciding how best to go about this. He knew the water dropped off a little further out, but he didn’t want to have to dive too deep to get to the pipsqueak if something went wrong.

“Only gonna teach you how to float n’ keep your head above water.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay!” 

On the bright side, this should be easy enough for him to pick up. All he had to do was move his arms and legs with enough strength to keep his head above water, something the kid should have no trouble doing.

Hog began to demonstrate the arm motions in the air for Junkrat to mimic. It made him feel like an idiot but Rat nodded and began to pinwheel his arms in circles in front of him, trying to copy the motions exactly. 

“Tuck your legs up. See if you can stay above water with only your arms.”

Blonde eyebrows rose but after a second, he crossed his legs over each other and immediately went bobbing to the bottom. At the same time, he began to wiggle his arms, momentarily trying the circular motion that Roadhog had shown him before giving up and simply making any upwards movement with his arms that helped him stay afloat. The water was so shallow that he was in no danger of actually drowning and so Roadhog only stood there and watched with his own arms folded. 

It wasn’t the prettiest way of treading water that he’d ever seen, but it seemed to be working okay. Rat started giggling when he managed not to swallow some water for a few seconds and looked at Roadhog with a beaming smile for his approval. When the pig mask gave a small nod, he cheered and punched one fist in the air.

The motion upset the fragile balance he’d built and Junkrat pitched over to one side, inhaling a mouthful of water. A deep belly laugh ripped through Hog as he reached out to snag the back of Rat’s binder and yank him upright. He stood up on his legs, pride exchanged for embarrassment as he realized Roadhog was laughing at him.  
“Go fuck yerself.”

“You have to keep going.”

Ignoring the annoyance on his boss’ face, Roadhog nudged him out into the deeper water. Here it rose to lap at Junkrat’s binder as he stood, and then went higher, until the bottom of his chin was tickled by the waves. The sand here was harder packed than the sand up on shore, worn and crushed by the weight of so much water on top of it. His peg leg found better purchase here and he was able to stand, wiggling his eyebrows at Hog, amused by the fact that anyone seeing him from the shore would think he was just a head bobbing around on the waves. 

“Arms again. Legs too.”

“Leg.” Junkrat corrected helpfully but complied. Hog winced slightly as the peg leg struck him across the shin and moved out of it’s way, watching the strange way the smaller junker was wriggling in order to stay afloat. Instead of the circles he’d been taught, the measured kicks and careful motions designed to save energy and help the person tread water longer, Rat lashed out at everything around him with ferocity. There was no way he’d be able to keep it up for long, but it’d be long enough for Roadhog to scoop him out of the drink if he needed it. Or whatever sap the kid got if the bigger man quit.

After. After he quits.

“Don’t go in deeper than your head or I’ll chain you to my back and carry you around the rest of the day.”

God, that sounded like an awful punishment for the both of them, but Junkrat eventually nodded his assent with a grumble, sinking momentarily into the water to blow bubbles that expressed his discontent. Roadhog grunted, shook his head, and began to walk back to the sand.

He’d probably get in the water later, once he’d finished with his book. For the moment he was content to sit on the beach, in the shade.

 

 

Only a few hours later did he realize he’d forgotten to make Junkrat lather himself in sunscreen, when the scrawny kid came bounding over to him as red as a lobster. Instead of complaining about the pain, like Roadhog expected, he began to tug on his arm, insisting that he had something to show him. A quick scan of the beach showed nothing out of the ordinary, except for a few more people who’d arrived throughout the day and some lopsided sandcastles that had been built up and down the shore.

It was to the biggest of these that Rat pulled him. Apparently, his suggestion of building a sandcastle had been taken seriously- Hog had stopped checking up on him every few minutes when he hauled himself out of the water and wrapped a towel around his shoulders. 

They were less sandcastles and more sand mountains, the substance piled up into something that many have at one point resembeled a dwelling. Now it was a mass of seaweed, shells, and wet sand but Junkrat pointed to it and beamed brightly.

“Lookit! Ain’t she a beaut?”

He stayed silent but that didn’t seem to deter the other. The blonde set to circling the construction, curiously careful to stay a few feet away from it. He was still talking, but Roadhog focused on the precise placing of his feet- never close. Like he was walking on the edge of something.

“Me own castle! M’King Jamison Fawkes the First now! Yer gonna have to show me some respect!”

His bodyguard sighed and turned to look at the other, cocking his head to the side. The gesture seemed to be all that Rat needed to understand him and he nodded furiously, starting to laugh again. On instinct, Hog moved a few more feet back from the creation.

“Well, if I’m gonna be a king, me castle’s gotta stand tall, right? So, I figured I’d trap it, keep anyone from taking ‘er over or destroyin’ ‘er!”

A furious happiness passed over his face and Hog watched him pick up a rather large shell from at his feet.

“Watch! Me moat’s got teeth!”

Before the bodyguard could get a word in edgewise, Rat had thrown it at the pile. It landed on the seemingly loose sand around the building and there was a faint click.

Instead of the heat wave he’d been expecting, or the boom of an explosion, he saw the glint of steel and a sudden shower of stand. One of Jamie’s steel traps had been placed around the castle, buried to conceal its presence and primed to destroy any threat to the magnificent dwelling.

That mound of sand now had metal teeth firmly embedded in it, locked together through the center of the construction. Shells and seaweed scattered, and the top of the building began to crack away, disrupted by the sudden shock of the trap closing. 

Roadhog laughed as Junkrat began to howl curses, the sounds combining into something loud enough for the beachgoers further down the shore to hear. Heads began to turn in their direction.

It was time to go, before Junkrat’s skin began to blister and the cops came. But god, if the look on the brat’s face hadn’t been worth the whole fucking trip.


End file.
